Cloverzilla

I don't intend to turn my blog into a movie review blog. I don't watch that many movies, and the movies I watch are usually older and have already been covered. But, I watched Cloverfield today and have a couple of things to say about it.

Cloverfield, benign-sounding title notwithstanding, is a Godzilla movie. It's got computer generated images and a very hip cinema verité technique, but it's a Godzilla movie.

The main characters are twenty-somethings, and the action begins at a surprise party for Rob, who is being sent to Japan (Japan? Get it? An inside reference to Godzilla!) for his job. We have a clue--based on a video he made of the encounter--that at an earlier time he and his longtime friend, Beth, had broken through the fourth wall of their relationship and become intimate. As the story progresses, cleverly, in bits and pieces, we find that Rob didn't know how to handle the intimacy, so afterwards didn't call Beth. Tsk tsk. Isn't that just like a guy? Afraid of commitment. There's no explanation as to why she didn't call him.

Beth and Rob's relationship is the subplot that propels the action of the main characters. As everyone is running away from the attack of the monster, Rob and his friends make their way against the tide of evacuees to find Beth, who is trapped in her apartment. The suspense comes from the group of four encountering junior size monsters (parasites) in a subway tunnel, the rampaging 350-foot Godzilla-monster, and getting into Beth's building. She lives on the 39th floor, and her apartment building is leaning over, Tower of Pisa style, against another building.

All of this is told in a POV video style, as Rob's friend Hud handles the camera to "document" the attack. I think the video style of the movie may have hurt the box office--that and its awful title, Cloverfield--because in some of the reviews I read people left the theater with motion sickness. That didn't bother me with the DVD on my regular TV screen. It could be because the screen was a size that was manageable for my brain, not overwhelmed by hugeness and herky-jerky activity. I'm sure my wife and I would both need to take Dramamine before seeing this movie in a theater. (Hmmm. That could've been a gimmick. Free Dramamine to everyone who buys a ticket!)

The video simulation gave the special effects guys problems because they had to match their effects to a hand held camera. I'm amazed that they did it so well. I was also surprised that it was filmed in Los Angeles and not New York, because the special effects were so good I was convinced the movie was filmed in Manhattan.

The trailer for the movie that had everyone excited showed the Stature of Liberty being beheaded and the head ending up on the street. That was an extremely well-done and dramatic bit of business. Some of the damage in the movie was directly inspired by the attack of 9/11. The images seem very familiar to us all: people running in front of a fast-moving dust cloud, people who couldn't get out of the way covered in dust. Collapsing buildings. It is just 9/11 intensified. After all, after the incredible and horrifying events of that day, how could a filmmaker hope to compete except to make it bigger?

The young people in the movie are an attractive and talented cast, who are all unknown to me.

I can recommend Cloverfield if you accept it as a very slick production made to look non-slick, and that at its heart it's a remake of an old Japanese monster movie. The monster in Cloverfield isn't a guy in a rubber suit stomping through a miniature city like in the original, but that's what I thought of while I watched the movie.

Goodbye Larry

My old friend Larry died last week, age 86.

When I met Larry he was in his mid-50s, and as cantankerous and curmudgeonly as a man years older. Larry, although raised near a city, was country clear through. He was a cowboy who owned horse property. Years before I met him Larry had gotten a job as a schoolbus driver, then worked his way into the electronics shop, where he fixed televisions, working on the school district's technology, which even in the 1970s was more from the 1950s. During that whole time his primary interest was in his horses, the job something to support him and his family.

Larry retired about 20 years ago, before computers became part of our daily lives. I just can't see Larry having anything to do with "those ornery cusses", as he liked to call devices he mistrusted.

Larry was a WWII Navy vet. After the Philippines were liberated from Japanese occupation Larry was stationed there and had plenty to say about his time there. I'm sure his family didn't know his Philippine stories.

Larry was a solid Roosevelt Democrat. He was a strong union man, serving as the president of our local in the early 1980s. Union meetings could get raucous when Larry was president, with lots of shouting. One time when we, as a group, questioned the union tactics in negotiations with our employer, Larry called us a "bunch of ungrateful sons of bitches!" and added, "I'm quittin'. This is the most thankless fuckin' job I've ever had!"

But he came back because it was Larry's job to be our union rep and he loved the contentiousness, the dust-ups and telling our employers where to stick it.

My first boss at the school district, Jim, was a staunch Republican, and a "right wingy-dingy Republican" as Larry called them. Larry got into a shouting match with my boss over politics one day while he was in our building wiring an intercom system. Jim called Larry's boss and said, "I don't want that guy in my building ever again." They must've smoothed it over because the next week Larry was back working on the system, but this time he didn't talk politics.

Larry was a needle artist and could dish out the insults. He knew my wife, who worked for the school district media center at the time. He said to me, "How'd an ugly bastard like you get such a cute one?" In a perverse way I saw it as a compliment.

Larry's "office" was a work bench in our electronics shop, where various projects were lined up, repair jobs to be done. Larry was taking a rare sick day, and his coworkers strung a 1/4" PVC hose, taping it under benches, the length of their shop. It was hooked to the water tap in the shop sink, and ended right under Larry's work space. When Larry came back to work the next day he sat at his bench and someone turned on the water. It poured onto Larry's lap. He jumped off his stool hollering, "You worthless bastards! You sonsabitches!" He told me later, "Them guys had their fun, but I'll get back at 'em." If he did I don't remember it, or probably just didn't hear about it, but I'm sure whatever revenge he thought up was good. That was Larry.

Psycho on steroids

The writer of Vacancy explained how he got the idea for the movie. When he got out of college he and his wife ran a dude ranch. It was only open four months a year which gave them eight months to travel. He traveled back roads in New Mexico and saw lonely motels without customers and wondered what went on in them. That gave him his idea for the story.

Or, more likely, he saw Psycho and thought he'd make it bigger. Vacancy is Psycho with three times the number of killers and twice the number of victims. Actually, many more than two, but for the purposes of the plot, two we care about.

David and Amy, played by Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale, are a couple in crisis. They are on the verge of divorce, after the tragedy of losing their son. They are traveling back home from Amy's family home, and ignore lessons from every horror movie they've ever seen by 1) getting off the highway onto A Lonely Back Road in the dark, and 2) by checking into A Creepy Motel after their car breaks down.

The movie seems well set up for suspense, but asks the audience to suspend disbelief with some plot contrivances. We're asked to accept that the killers, who are making snuff films for money (the motel biz is pretty slow where they are) are using a motel room which is easily identifiable in which to perform their murders. Not only that, they leave tapes of the murders next to a TV in that very room!

We know the killers aren't stupid people, or at least the chief killer isn't, because he's shown with a whole movie editing operation in his office. So why leave evidence around for anyone, especially potential victims, to find? We're not privy to such motivation, because we aren't given any information beyond the fact the killers are homicidal murder movie auteurs.

The killers inexplicably taunt David and Amy by doing dumb things like calling the room and not saying anything, then banging on the door of the room and the connecting door to the next room. Uh, yeah...and this is for what purpose? David and Amy watch parts of the tapes, and despite heavy duress instantly grasp the significance. In the tapes the killers rush in and overwhelm their victims. So why now do they toy with David and Amy? Well, because then we have a 90 minute movie and not a 10 minute movie of a couple getting ambushed.

There is some nonsense about tunnels under the motel leading into various rooms, and killers chasing David and Amy in some sort of roundabout fashion. It reminds me of old comedies where people creep through hallways, go in one door, come out another.

Clichès abound in this movie, and the logical lapses are big. But the movie is intense and the quick glimpses from the snuff films are morbid and repulsive. The DVD has "extended scenes of the snuff films." Gee, guys, thanks, but I think I'll skip that section.

Personally, I stay on the main roads, I travel during daylight, I don't go to motels on lonely stretches of road. In that respect I'm smarter than David and Amy, and avoid turning my own life into a snuff movie. My recommendation is that since you've already seen Vacancy, in several other movies which have been cannibalized to make this repellent entertainment, you're better off skipping it altogether.

Goodbye Donald Westlake and Richard Stark

Donald E. Westlake, novelist, died of a heart attack at age 75 on New Year's Eve. He was in Mexico with his wife.

Westlake, who is one of my all-time favorite writers, wrote over 100 books. I'm proud that I've read just about every one of them, and his short stories, too.

In his earlier years he wrote under several pen-names, but whittled them down to one: Richard Stark for his stark stories of the thief, Parker. He wrote his more humorous books about hapless criminals, Dortmunder and Kelp, under his own name.

If you're not familiar with his name, you are probably familiar with some of his movies, which include the fantastically popular 1972 film, The Hot Rock, starring Robert Redford and George Segal. He also wrote the screenplay for a story that broke a lot of rules, The Stepfather, with Terry O'Quinn (John Locke in the TV series, Lost). I haven't seen The Stepfather for over 20 years--it's currently not available on DVD in the U.S.--but no one could forget the opening, as a blasè O'Quinn comes down the stairs and steps over the corpses of the family he has just murdered, only to leave the house and set up residence in another town...with another family.

The Parker novels (and it's just one name, "Parker," no first name), are set in a world of criminals and big crimes. Parker is a thief--and killer, when need be--who makes a couple of scores a year and then lives off the ill-gotten proceeds. He has no mercy, no conscience. He's a complete sociopath. The trick that "Richard Stark" pulled off so neatly is that we readers are always pulling for him to get away with it. The series was originally published as paperback originals in the 1960s*, beginning with the novel Point Blank. As the series developed a cult following it found its way into hard covers.

While Dortmunder and Kelp are criminals they have foibles that can be very funny, but there is no funniness about Parker. From Flashfire (2000):

The driver was getting out of the Cherokee. He gave Parker an incurious look, turned to lock the Cherokee, and Parker stepped rapidly toward him, taking the Sentinel out of his pocket, holding it straight-armed in from of himself, aiming as he moved. He fired once, and the .22 cartridge punched through the meat of the driver's left leg, halfway between knee and hip, then went on to crack into the door panel of the Cherokee, leaving a starred black dent.

The driver sagged, astonished, falling against the Cherokee, staring over his shoulder at Parker. "What? What?"

Parker stepped very close, showing him the Sentinel. "I shot you," he said. "The vest doesn't cover the leg. It doesn't cover the eye, either. You want one in the eye?"

"Who the fuck are you?" The driver was in shock, the blood drained from his face. He pawed at his left leg.

Parker held the Sentinel close to his face. "Answer me."

"What'd I do to you? I don't even know you!"

"I'm robbing you," Parker told him.

Whew. As you can tell, Parker isn't a very nice guy.

Amorality is a strange thing to root for, and it takes a skilled writer to bridge the gap between disgust for the character and empathy. My guess is it's a form of fantasy or wish. In some situations in life we'd all like to be Parker, in total control, who lives in a black and white world: take what you need, don't let anyone stop you, kill anyone who gets in your way. Thank god I don't know anyone like Parker, but thank god I had the series to read over the decades.

*My Parker paperbacks are stashed, but I recently found a first printing of The Jugger from 1965. When I found it I felt like I had just hit the lottery.

Goodbye, Paul Newman

Paul Newman is prominent on the list of famous people who died in 2008. He had a career that spanned decades, and made quite a name and reputation for himself as an actor, among other things (race car driver and salad dressing maker, for two).

Sally and I watched his 1982 movie, The Verdict, the other night, and were once again impressed by the depth of his skill as an actor. By coincidence this week I found a DVD that purports to be his first professional acting job. It's from Tales of Tomorrow, a half-hour science fiction series. The DVD I have is volume 1, and Newman can be found in the last episode of the season, "Ice From Space," first broadcast on August 8, 1952. It was shown on the then-fledgling ABC-TV Network live, filmed in the Kinescope process where a camera filmed the TV monitor, for showings in other areas of the country. In the episode Newman plays Sergeant Wilson, one of only five actors in the low-budget--or should I say no-budget--drama.

I did a screen capture of what may be Paul Newman's first appearance on camera of any kind. He is to the right of an actor who is just a spear-carrier, and doesn't speak. At least Newman has a few lines to say.

Everybody starts somewhere, and if the DVD information is correct, this is the very moment Paul Newman started his screen career.

The New Year's elopement

Happy New Year. January 1, 2009, is our wedding anniversary: forty years. We eloped.

Forty years ago tonight I was about six weeks out of the Army. Sally and I were invited to a party. The party-givers, who we didn't know, actually invited our friends, Dick and Lynda, who invited us. The party was pretty boring. I'm sure I was drinking too much, as I did in those days, and I didn't know anybody. In an offhand way I said to Sally, "Why don't we go get married?" I think I was trying to be funny.

Ha, ha.

Ha.

The laugh was on me. As soon as she heard the m-word Sally practically jumped into my 1967 Dodge. Dick and Lynda were game. They were as drunk as me. We took off in the night toward Wendover, Nevada, which is about two hours west of Salt Lake City. It had snowed and our route, I-80, was pretty slick in spots. I've always wondered if I was just too stupid to get killed or if some guardian angel wasn't looking over me. How I made it to Wendover in my drunken state on icy roads is a mystery to me.

When we got to Wendover Lynda went into a casino and asked if there was a justice of the peace who could marry her friends. The people there said we'd have to travel to Elko, the county seat, which was another bunch of miles...in the dark...on icy roads. As soon as Lynda came back to the car and told us the news my nerve fled me. It drained out of me like pulling the plug on a crankcase. I tried to back out, but no one was having any of it.

"No!" said Lynda. "We've come this far and YOU'RE GOING TO GET MARRIED."

You know what? I've told this story so many times I'm afraid it's taking on the smell of one of those bullshit lies I talked about in my last blog entry. But it's true, or at least as true as my memory can be counted on for the truth. I took one look at Sally, at the tears in her eyes and said, "Well, OK, Elko it is."

We got to Elko about 3:30 in the morning. We went to the Stockman's Casino. By that time the casino as emptying out. The drunks who had passed out were being ejected by the Elko Police, who were making periodic sweeps through the place. Lynda asked one of the cops, "My friends want to get married." The cop laughed. "Well, tell 'em to go upstairs and practice up. The courthouse will be open at noon." Damn, curses, foiled again! I'd been hoping that being New Year's Day no one would be venturing to do business like marrying folks. I have since learned about Nevada that rules be damned. It's a wide-open place when it comes to things like that.

An older man who was pretty drunk, but not drunk enough to be tossed out, waved us over and offered to buy us drinks. We sat down and were treated. He rambled on about something or other. I'm sure he wasn't as old then as I am now but he looked like a geezer to me. The drinks kept coming. At one point he was talking about something and looked down at the tabletop and said, "Oh, fuck the world!" Apparently, being alone on an early New Year's morning was a bit depressing for the guy.

In my wallet I had about $15. I think Dick had a few bucks, but neither of us had thought of how much it would cost for a wedding license, or any other costs for that matter. It was in the days before Visa, but the drunk man had a credit card he let the girls use to call home. Maybe American Express or one of Visa and Mastercard's ancestors, Bankamericard or Mastercharge. Sally called her stepmom about 5:30 a.m. and told her what was going on. My future mother-in-law said she'd call my mom, who had called her concerned that I hadn't come home. Me? I didn't care if anyone was worried or not. I was worried enough about how I was going to pull this wedding off.

Dick had been playing nickel slot machines for about a half hour, and winning. He told me, "I think people have been loading 'em up all night and they're ready to pay off." Were they ever! I won $65 in nickels in a very short time on one machine. A girl with a tray full of $2.00 rolls of nickels stood by me and as the jackpots kept coming she'd just hand me my winnings.

I had to go to the bathroom and when I came back the machine I'd been playing had an out of order sign on it. Ah, well.

I was wearing a sport coat and my pockets were loaded with heavy rolls of nickels. The rest of the morning is a blur, but at noon we were at the courthouse, getting our license. We weren't the only couple there to be married; we were first in line but there were some others there for that purpose. I am looking at a copy of my marriage license as I type this: Elko Township Justice Of The Peace Edward T. Lunsford performed the ceremony. Our friends Dick and Lynda were our witnesses and their signatures are on the license. I haven't spoken with either of them for over 20 years, but they were our best friends for at least a few years after the trip to Elko.

At the conclusion of the ceremony Justice Lunsford said to me, "It's customary to tip me." I asked, "Will you take rolls of nickels?" and he gave me an answer I have used ever since: "If the bank will take it, I'll take it." So I forked over two or three rolls of nickels.

The trip back to Salt Lake is also a blur, but when we got back I remember my father-in-law, Ray, shaking my hand and giving congratulations, and I also remember my mother in a white heat of anger. I'd gone home to take a shower, change clothes, face Mom. I don't remember exactly what she said to me but it was probably more of the same "you're a harebrain" talk she gave me often. In this case she was probably right. To make a long story even longer, Sally and I spent the night at Motel 6. Motel 6 ("We'll leave the light on for you") was named that because a room cost $6.00, which I paid for with rolls of nickels. Motel 6 was bare minimum stuff: a bed, bathroom, no TV, no phone. Hey, we were on our honeymoon, so (wink-wink-nudge-nudge) who needed a TV, and especially who needed or wanted a phone?

On that night, January 1, 1969, I had no idea how long the marriage would last. Just now using the calculator I figured that Sally and I have been married 14,600 days. Does that sound longer than 40 years?

Finally, a couple of weeks later we found out that the man who had used his credit card so Sally and Lynda could call home, and who bought us drinks, was using a stolen card. It was easier to get away with it in those days. It took a while before the paperwork caught up and the crook was long gone. By then I'd settled down into a dull terror that now I had a wife and responsibilities. Ulp. In my wildest imaginings I never thought down the road, probably no more than a few days or week at a time, and certainly not 40 years.

Bullshit lies

So, it turns out the dream romance was just that, a dream. The story of Herman Rosenblat and wife Roma, who it was said met at a concentration camp as children, then re-met and married years later in America, turns out to be a hoax. Herman Rosenblat excuses the falsehood, which brought his wife and him fame, as just trying to make people feel good.

Well, OK...that's fine, but it's also a bullshit lie. Sometimes people get caught up in their own lies and when they've told the lie long enough it becomes the truth to them. Maybe after all these years to Herman and Roma those 1945 events they described actually happened.

For a time when I was a junior in high school I was a bullshit liar. I told lies about things I can barely remember now. I scratch my head trying to figure my motives. I'm sure there are psychological reasons: wanting to be accepted, wanting to be the center of attention. One day I was at my locker in a hallway crowded with fellow students. A couple of lockers down I overheard two classmates laughing about one of my lies, and I knew I'd been busted. They knew I was lying to them, and I was embarrassed.

When I was telling whoppers I felt like an actor in a play, reciting lines, and I wonder if that's how Herman Rosenblat felt. As humans we're good at lying. Lying and deception are in our psychological makeup, but like a lot of other human behaviors we call it wrong for others yet do it ourselves.

Even though we all tell lies, we have a certain naïve quality that allows others to manipulate us with lies. A while ago I talked about people believing that they were abducted by aliens and taken into UFOs for medical experiments. Some of the people who tell these stories may believe them, but others are lying and they get people to believe them. Our capacity to believe lies makes it easier for a liar to get away with his craft.

Oprah had Herman Rosenblat and his wife on her show, and now that the truth has come out I'm sure she feels betrayed. Other people have been questioning the Rosenblat story for a while, and now that it's been exposed for the lie it is, I'm sure they feel vindicated. But there are other people who, even in the face of the truth, would rather believe the fiction.

Is it me...?

Or is it he?


I know it's been a week since I wrote you, my hundreds of thousands of adoring fans. Day after day e-mails fill my mailbox with your messages imploring me, "Please, El Postino, please come back to your blog. Enlighten us with your wisdom, guide us on our paths of intellectual curiosity, tell us in unsparing detail your fascinating outlook on life and describe to us everyone else's major character defects."

Of course, then I woke up and realized I'd been dreaming.

But this wasn't a dream, because apparently I do figure in other peoples' lives, in some strange way. A principal I've worked with for several years was talking to me recently. He mentioned that he found it enjoyable, "to talk to you and your wife in Las Vegas a couple of years ago."

I said, "I haven't been in Las Vegas since 1973."

He replied, "Oh, then it must've been Mesquite [Nevada]," to which I remarked, "I've never been to Mesquite."

He looked a little puzzled but continued on as if I hadn't just disrupted a memory. The thing is, and I've mentioned it in this blog before, people do think I'm other people. In the early '90s I was asked, "Are you the guy in the underwear ad?" Last year I was asked, "Aren't you the guy in the Auto Zone poster?" "No, I'm not."

Finally, I worked with a secretary for 15 years who was so sure it was me having dinner at the Macaroni Grill restaurant that she approached "me" and started talking. It wasn't until "I" said I wasn't "me" and didn't know "me" that she asked if perhaps "I" was my own twin brother. I can't vouch for the story because I wasn't the "I" talking to her.

So what makes people think they see me elsewhere? These aren't strangers, these are people who have worked with me every day for many years, and yet they think I'm someone else. Who the guy and his wife were that the principal thought were my wife and me I have no idea. I wonder if that couple thought my friend was some sort of crazy person.

It could be the white beard. Maybe that's what people are looking at, rather than my other features. What say you. I ask again, as I have asked before: Do you know me? Do you think you know me?

**********

A few days ago I went to YouTube and found a video of sexy pin-up Bettie Page dancing. Someone had put a song by '60s garage rock band, The Seeds, over the video. I put it on my blog. Today I went again to YouTube looking for songs by bandleader/entertainer Louis Prima, and found one of his songs over another stripper, also named Betty, Betty Blue. I give you Betty, I give you Louis:

Blue Eyes Crying

A few days ago I was taken by surprise by a pair of blue eyes. As I lost myself in a reverie about eyes being the windows of the soul, the eyes have it, and eyes on the prize, I thought about "Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain," one of my favorite songs of all time.

Thank god for YouTube, which is a treasure chest of music remembered, forgotten and new.

Roy Acuff did the first version of "Blue Eyes" the year I was born; his is a more uptempo version of the Fred Rose song. Hank Williams followed in this transcription from his old radio show, year unknown (gotta be very early '50s or late '40s, because Williams died New Year's Eve, 1952).

Willie Nelson's "Blue Eyes" is the one I heard first when it was released in the early 1970s. This version from Austin, TX, is Willie redoing the song as only he can. He would never be content to sing the same version over and over; he reinvents music. His is a lot closer to Hank Williams', which shows the evolution of a great song. Williams and Nelson both understood that "Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain" is a lament, a song about loss, not a hillbilly dance tune.

Finally, Sheryl Crow takes Willie's version and makes it her own song. But she continues on with the song as lament: "When we kissed goodbye and parted, I knew we'd never meet again." Powerful words in a simple melody, made so much more by the interpretations of the great artists who have sung this special song.

Roy Acuff, 1947



Hank Williams



Willie Nelson



Sheryl Crow, 2004

Turning the Page

The cult fave, pin-up model Bettie Page, died the other day at age 85. I don't think anyone ever thought of her as being that age, because all of the pictures of her, and there are thousands out there, are of a young, voluptuous, beautiful woman.

I saw pictures of Bettie in 1966, after she retired as a model. A friend was showing me some old magazines and pointed her out. I was amazed at her beauty. I think everyone who sees her for the first time has that feeling.

Among her other modeling jobs, Bettie used to hire out to photography clubs. Guys with cameras would pay her to go on some location shooting, then take her picture. There could be thousands more pictures of Bettie we've never seen, from the late 1940's-early 1950s, in photo albums and in desk drawers. What she's most famous for, the pictures that helped sell hundreds of issues of magazines, "the kind men like," are everywhere. After her religious conversion Bettie went home to the South, then disappeared. There was a revival of her image in the 1980s, but she wasn't making anything off the public's appetite for her. She came forward and claimed her own pictorial representation. I hope she made some money from the process.

Page made an untold number of film loops and was the subject of photos with S&M as the theme. These were made by Irving Klaw in New York City, and sold to a specialized audience of guys who liked to see girls tied up or spanked. When I see pictures of S&M as it's done now it seems painful and dangerous, and someone could get seriously hurt. With Bettie you never got the feeling she was suffering; just that she seemed to be enjoying her work, and that for her it was all just another gig in front of the camera. In my adolescent mind the pictures of her in nylons and high heels seemed forbidden, mysterious, kinky. Nowadays you see stuff like that in the pages of fashion magazines. Apparently Bettie was about 50 years ahead of fashion. Either that or people looked at those old pictures and said, "That's the look I want for this ad!"

A captured still from the DVD, Bettie Page The Girl In The Leopard Print Bikini.

I believe that well into our current century, like Marilyn Monroe, Bettie Page will remain the object of a loyal following.

Here's a great video. Someone matched up an old burlesque clip of Bettie with the song, "Can't Seem To Make You Mine," by the '60s group, The Seeds.

Old galfriends

A coworker asked me a few months ago, "Do you ever wonder what happened to your old girlfriends? Do you ever wonder what they're doing now?" I answered, "Hell, no!"

I've gotten to a stage in life where I understand about unfinished and finished business. Some folks never do, so maybe I've got an advantage. I know when a relationship is over. I knew my relationship with Cathy was over when I was in the Army and got a Dear John letter from her. She told me she'd met someone else and they were going to get married.

I met Cathy when I was just short of 17, and she was barely 15. I was a junior in high school and she was a 9th grader. I suppose her folks were pretty liberal by letting us go out together, but usually we double-dated. Parents thought that was safe. It really wasn't; instead of one couple in a car necking you had two couples, but I digress.

Cathy and I practiced the relationship business on each other for about three years, and we made a lot of mistakes. Kids don't understand the process of courtship, the process of getting to know a person of the opposite sex, getting disappointed, getting dumped, getting your heart broken. We went through the process with monotonous regularity. We'd get to a point where we'd be fine, then something would happen and we'd be fighting again.

During one of our fights she went on a date with a classmate, who ran his Volkswagen Beetle into the back end of a parked car, sending Cathy to the hospital with her teeth knocked out. Luckily the boy's dad was a dentist who fixed her teeth for her. But the hidden damage was that she sustained some sort of brain injury. I never found out what it was.

After she was out of my life I got lucky. I met and married my wife, while the guy Cathy married divorced her at some point. I have no idea what happened to her after that, and after I get through writing this I'll go about the business of not thinking about her for say, the next 40 years.

Some people never get over former loves. Some still feel love for a person long gone out of their life. I'm not telling anyone how to feel, but I think I'm just more pragmatic. I don't waste time on someone who's gone. When a relationship is over it's time to just move on, not fret about what went wrong or worry about getting the person back. Not long after my youthful romance with Cathy ended I moved on, lessons learned.

Mom, is that you?

My friend linked to a really fun vintage pin-up blog.

I had a thought looking at all of these old-time girly photos. What if a guy in 2008 is looking at this site and sees a picture of his mother from her younger days, posing seductively? Here's a basic plot, and I'm throwing it out to all of you writers out there. Use it if you want to:

The man did not know this side of his mother or her past. His father is in the Alzheimer's wing of a nursing home, out of his mind. His mother died of cancer in her sixties, so he can't confront her. His mother's only surviving sister, his aunt, is initially close-mouthed, but tells him some names of people his mother mentioned during her wild days. The man decides to find out about her and uncovers her links to not only photo clubs (the clubs organized to take pictures of models for a fee), but also pornography, the mob and murder.


That's all I have. Your assignment, should you decide to accept it, will be to come up with a near 50-year-old mystery and the secrets the man uncovers that have a ripple effect to the present day.

I thought of it after finding this pin-up picture on another blog earlier this year.

The face reminded me of photos I've seen of my mother when she was young. Mom died this year at age 86, so she would have been the right age, and my imagination ran away with me. No one wants to think of his mother in this situation, but somebody's moms did it. There has always been a whole industry based on women who don't mind showing off their bodies, and there are a lot of guys who like looking at them, more than enough to support the industry.

If you use the plot, let me know. I'd love to read what you've written.

Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette

Thursday night we had Thanksgiving dinner at my brother-in-law Randy's house. We've been together for many years. Conversation was fun, we laughed and told stories.

At least once one of the family smokers slipped outside the house for a cigarette. In those long ago holiday celebrations three and four decades ago ashtrays were all over the house. We all just lit up where we were. We had a great meal, then finished it off with a cig and a cup of coffee or a drink. My father-in-law, Ray, smoked, I smoked...several people smoked until the air was choked with noxious fumes.

I started smoking as a teenager, but was in the Army before the addiction took hold. In June, 1967, we were taking a night class, outside, sitting on a lawn. An old sergeant noticed one of the guys in the back lighting up, so he said, "What the hell. Smoke 'em if you got 'em." I had a pack in my pocket and realized I was craving a smoke. Not just wanting it, but needing it. That's when I knew that all of the experimenting I'd done with tobacco over the past two or three years had finally come to addiction. When I tell that story people say, "How did you feel about it?" I guess they expect me to say I hated it. But I'm honest about it: "Well, it made up my mind as to whether I was a smoker or someone who just flirted with it. I knew then I was." I was kind of relieved. It was cheap, too. When I was in the Army cigarettes were 17¢ a pack! When I got home in late '68 the price doubled to 34¢.

It took ten years of smoking before I decided to seriously kick it, and it was because of the publicity about second-hand cigarette smoke, about kids growing up in a smoking household. My wife was pregnant with our son at the time. I set a target date and quit that day three months before he was born. I went through several days of withdrawal agony. By the time I'd been nicotine free for about two weeks I figured I'd beat the habit, and it turned out I had. Over the next few months I gained 30 pounds, though, and was pretty upset about that. That took another ten years to get rid of, but that's another story.

Nowadays I've almost forgotten how obnoxious smoking really is. I just don't see it that much. I'll be sitting at a traffic light and smell tobacco smoke from another car, or I'll see people standing outside a workplace, in the cold, puffing away. I'm grateful that on that date in 1978 I quit smoking. Just six months after my addiction became noticeable my father died of a heart attack at age 47. He was a lifelong smoker. Legend is, although he never confirmed it, that when he was 12 his mother handed him a carton of cigarettes and said, "I know you're going to smoke anyway, so you might as well smoke in the house." I didn't take heed of his death, let it be a lesson. I kept smoking anyway for nearly another decade.

When I quit smoking the average price of a pack was 65¢. Outrageous! Now I see people spending the better part of a $5.00 bill on a pack of cigarettes. If I hadn't already quit that would be enough to make me take the pledge.

"Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette" was a song that came out the year I was born--1947--and was made popular by Tex Williams. Asleep at the Wheel does a great version, featured in this video of happy, smiling--and presumably addicted--smokers.

"Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette.
Puff, puff, puff, and if you smoke yourself to death.
Tell St. Peter at the Golden Gate, you just hate to make him wait,
But you've just gotta have another cigarette."

Help, my life is a reality show!

Along with my recent posting about people who think they've been abducted by aliens, comes this recent article about people who think they're participants in a reality TV show. It's called the Truman Syndrome, after the 1998 movie, The Truman Show, starring Jim Carrey. Some psychiatric patients believe their life is being filmed without their permission.

Like alien abduction, the Truman syndrome is fueled by popular culture, and has worked its way into personal delusions. Quoting the copyrighted article by Jennifer Peltz of the Associated Press:

Researchers have begun documenting what they dub the "Truman syndrome," a delusion afflicting people who are convinced that their lives are secretly playing out on a reality TV show. Scientists say the disorder underscores the influence pop culture can have on mental conditions. "The question is really: Is this just a new twist on an old paranoid or grandiose delusion ... or is there sort of a perfect storm of the culture we're in, in which fame holds such high value?" said Dr. Joel Gold, a psychiatrist affiliated with New York's Bellevue Hospital.

In the last two years, Gold has encountered five patients with delusions related to reality TV. Several of them specifically mentioned "The Truman Show." Gold and his brother, a psychologist, started presenting their observations at medical schools in 2006. After word spread beyond medical circles this summer, they learned of about 50 more people with similar symptoms. The Oscar-nominated movie stars Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank. He leads a merrily uneventful life until he realizes his friends and family are actors, his seaside town is a TV soundstage and every moment of his life has been broadcast.

His struggle to sort out reality and illusion is heartwarming, but researchers say it's often horrifying for "Truman syndrome" patients. A few take pride in their imagined celebrity, but many are deeply upset at what feels like an Orwellian invasion of privacy. Delusions can be a symptom of various psychiatric illnesses, as well as neurological conditions such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. Some drugs also can make people delusional.

It's not unusual for psychiatrists to see delusional patients who believe their relatives have been replaced by impostors or who think figures in their lives are taking on multiple disguises.

But "Truman" delusions are more sweeping, involving not just some associates but society at large, Gold said. Delusions tend to be classified by broad categories, such as the belief that one is being persecuted, but research has shown culture and technology can also affect them. Reality television may help such patients convince themselves their experiences are plausible, according to the Austrian woman's psychiatrists, writing in the journal Psychopathology in 2004.

Ian Gold, a philosophy and psychology professor at McGill University in Montreal who has researched the matter with his brother, suggests reality TV and the Web, with their ability to make strangers into intimates, may compound psychological pressure on people who have underlying problems dealing with others. That's not to say reality shows make healthy people delusional, "but, at the very least, it seems possible to me that people who would become ill are becoming ill quicker or in a different way," Ian Gold said.

Other researchers aren't convinced, but still find the "Truman syndrome" an interesting example of the connection between culture and mental health.

Makes sense to me. My personal feeling is that for some people fantasy, in the form of television, can become reality. It's a hell of a lot more interesting. Unfortunately for some of us, the dull reality of daily life can't be shut off by a remote control. For anyone actually wanting to invade my privacy and watch my daily life, well, good luck. I lead the most boring life imaginable. Even I pray for commercial breaks to get relief from the crushing monotony.

"Please sir, can you spare 25 bil?"

The American automotive CEOs flew to Washington last week. After stepping out of their individual corporate jets, to everyone's disgust they went before Congress with hats in hand to beg for money.

I thought of the American car makers that have gone out of business in my lifetime. Just off the top of my head I can think of Studebaker, Packard, American Motors, Hudson...if I took the time to do a little research I'd probably come up with more that I've forgotten.

With all due respect to the working folks who earn their livings from GM, Ford and Chrysler, your companies have been mismanaged and their priorities gone askew. I hope that some help will come your way, but to ask me--who already pours more than enough of my income into your products--to contribute through taxes, well, gee, I gave at the office.

Anyway, looking at this beautiful car, in an ad in the July 7, 1947 Life Magazine, makes me wonder exactly what sort of thing happened to Studebaker that made it stop production in the U.S. in 1966. Studebakers were kind of a joke when I grew up in the 1950s and '60s; their cars were ugly to us, but now seem pretty in a designer way. Maybe they were just ahead of their time. The point is that as painful as it was I don't remember anyone asking the government for money to bail them out. Nor do I remember any other car companies doing the same. For all of our lives, as far back as we can remember, when a business succeeds it does it on its own, but there are lots and lots of reasons for failure, and no one cries to the government to extract them from the mess of their own making.

That awful whisper

This ad came from a 1947 issue of Life magazine, a gift from my friend Peggy.

Paranoia rears its ugly head! The man hears a whisper between two women. They're talking about his body odor. Doesn't he notice it? Why not do something about it before the whispering starts?

Maybe he just thinks that's what they're whispering. Maybe what the women are whispering has to do with not wanting to be in an elevator with him because his hands get real busy. Maybe he eats garlic and his breath turns the elevator into a noxious fume factory.

Why not worry that the women know about something that's going to happen to him, like he's going to lose his job. He goes home and takes a shower using Lifebuoy soap, then goes to work the next day and gets a termination notice! No need to smell pretty for that.

The man is experiencing just what the ad men and copywriters want him to think. That he smells bad. That he offends. He not only has B.O., he has halitosis. He doesn't use a Gillette razor so he has a five o'clock shadow. His teeth are yellow because he doesn't use Pepsodent. He has nostril hairs and dandruff. Better get Wildroot Cream Oil, Charlie!

The list of bodily offenses goes on and on. When you think about it, just stay home so you won't offend anyone at any time! No one will have to whisper about you...

False memories

In my last posting I mentioned false memories as being amongst the reasons people thought they'd been abducted by UFOs. I don't think I've been abducted by a UFO, although it's tempting to think that the reason I act the way I do might be attributed to aliens, but I'm sure I have a few false memories here and there. We humans, with those imperfect things called memories, are under a lot of influences. We can remember things that never happened.

Barb, a school secretary I encounter on my route, has reminded me several times when she met me I had long hair in a ponytail. I got my long hair cut in 1981, and was sure I hadn't met her until years later. As I pinned her down on the year she started working at the school district I found it was 1988, long after the ponytail was history. How had she remembered it? Because she worked with another lady who had worked with me in the late '70s and told her. As Barb and I established a working relationship her friend's memory became Barb's memory.

How many things do we actually remember, and how many we remember for some extraneous reason like that? I wonder how many things I have in my head that happened to me that actually didn't, that I may have seen on the ABC Movie Of The Week. Whew. The mind boggles.

**********

Believe in synchronicity? I do. I mentioned a couple of things in my last posting, the false memories and creationists who believe dinosaurs existed at the same time as people 6,000 years ago, and saw those things the next day in the Sunday comic strips. If you pay attention there are a lot of coincidences in life, some of them meaningful, some not, but when they happen to me I always pay attention.

Reason to believe

It feels good to get off the political kick we've all been on for weeks.

Sally and I were talking about what makes a person believe. I've been reading a book called Abducted by Susan Clancy. It's subtitled "Why people come to believe they were kidnapped by aliens." The author did some studying of folks who believe, or say they believe, they have been abducted by little gray aliens. The author attributes a lot of the reason they believe this to sleep paralysis, false memories and pop culture, movies and television, planting images in peoples' heads.

Some belief is borne of the brain trying to make sense of something that makes no sense. That opens up a whole area that I don't want to get into because it's just too big. But I told Sally I'd heard an author talk about a book, The God Gene, about being genetically predisposed to believe.

Like the folks who think they've been abducted by aliens and had invasive medical experiments done on them, so do lots of people believe unequivocally in God, religion--at least one they find conforms to their needs--without any real proof that what they are believing in is real. Apparently Sally and I have missed out on that. Neither of us feels the need to believe in any kind of unseen world. I should qualify that by saying we just don't know. Unlike others who are seeking spiritual enlightenment, we just don't bother. We both come from families with that history, too.

Author Clancy is a psychologist with several degrees. In a clinical setting she talked to a lot of people who believed they'd been kidnapped. She asked if they had specific memories of the abduction and many said no, they just knew they'd been abducted. There were feelings they couldn't explain in themselves and when they cast about for reasons they settled on alien abduction. I guess it wouldn't be much different to say they'd been visited by angels, or the Virgin Mary. As she states in the book, she didn't test how religious the abductees were, but thinks that may have relevance.

Susan Clancy might be as close to figuring it out as anyone, but human beings are complicated. It seems everyone has a reason for everything no matter how strange--or alien--it might seem to other people. Often the person with the belief doesn't know why they hold that belief. That's probably where the idea of a gene that determines whether a person is a believer or not would kick in.

I believe, relying on the science of brain research, that people have a genetic predispositon to be a believer or non-believer. It could explain why it's so hard to communicate on that level, and causes people to puzzle over the behavior of others: "Why don't those people believe like we do? Can't they see the truth? It's right in front of them!" I look in the sky, I see lights, and that's what they are to me: lights. You look in the sky and see those same lights and you believe they are people from another planet, that they might be here to take you aboard their spaceship so they can perform hideous experiments. I have unexplained feelings and attribute them to my medication, stress at work, or insomnia, and you might look at those same problems and think they were caused by aliens giving you an anal probe or getting you pregnant with their babies. I see dinosaur bones and think of an earth hundreds of millions of years ago. You look at those same bones and think they were living creatures who were around 6000 years ago when Adam and Eve were setting up housekeeping in the Garden of Eden.

There are a lot of people, most, I'd guess, who'd resist the idea of a gene determining how and what we believe. Even though I can believe there's such a gene I don't believe it's wholly responsible. People just have too many influences and too many choices. There are also peer and family pressures to believe a certain way. To the religious folks It would take God out of the picture to have a gene that tells your brain whether you're religious or not. To them that's completely unacceptable. To the abductees it takes away a notion that why they act the way they do is beyond their control because they're being controlled by an external force.

The latest I heard is that a gene might determine whether you're a political liberal or conservative! I'm sure everyone could have fun with that.

**********

While we're on the subject of believing, here's a fine cover of the old Tim Hardin song, "Reason to Believe," by Daniel Has Six Strings.

Veteran's Day 1968

To all Veterans and someday-to-be veterans, HAPPY VETERAN'S DAY.

Forty years ago today I was being processed out of the U.S. Army at Fort Dix, NJ. Several of my buddies from Utah, and other areas of the country, were also being discharged in a group that was going home from Germany. I'd been looking forward to this for so long that I was running on adrenaline. Except for a catnap here and there I hadn't slept in over 24 hours.

We arrived at Fort Dix somewhere around 2:00 a.m. and were processed through customs. A GI ahead of me had his duffel bag searched. In the bottom they found a stack of porno magazines. The customs inspector said, "You know you can't bring these into the country," and they went into some sort of receptacle. Maybe later the customs agents had a look. Gotta see the evidence, you know. I'm sure there was a lot of porn in those pre-Internet days that was smuggled in, but a lot that was confiscated.

We were bused to the messhall, which even at that ungodly hour of the morning was staffed by basic trainees. We were tired, but I'll bet the KP's were even more tired. Can you imagine working the all-night diner? These poor guys suddenly had a hundred or more people to feed. As we went through the line I noticed a lot of trainees gawking at us. We were in our Class-A uniforms, with all our ribbons, patches, brass and insignias. I'll bet to them we looked like a bunch of generals. It hadn't been all that long since I'd been a trainee and didn't know the difference between grades or rank.

We were processed as quickly as possible because it was Veteran's Day, a federal holiday, and no one wanted to be there. I understood that normally it took about three days to clear Fort Dix, but they got us done in a matter of hours so they could all go home. Our discharge papers, our DD214 forms, were typed and presented to us. We were also given travel money. As the clerk said to us: "You have choices. You go by privately owned vehicle (POV) and you get the most mileage money for travel. You go by train or bus you get less, you go by air you get the least of all." He paused for effect. "You don't have to put down POV if you don't want to." Naturally, every one of us wrote down POV. I worried for a couple of years afterward that Uncle Sam would come knocking at my door and ask for his $500 back. Like everyone else I headed for the airline counter and got a flight to Salt Lake City. Cost: $55.00.

Before we left we stood in a formation. Dawn was breaking. A sergeant stood in front of us. "Now this is a goddam holiday. You're gonna be veterans on Veteran's Day. Everything's closed today. But if it was up to me I'd march every goddam one of you to the barber shop and get your goddam hair cut. You are a disgrace to the goddam uniforms you're wearing." With that last goddam farewell to the troops we were suddenly free men, shaggy heads and all, piling into buses for the nearby Philadelphia airport.

My buddy Wally and I snoozed on the way to Chicago's O'Hare International. We had to make a connection, but had a couple of hours to kill. We headed for an airport bar. While we were having our drinks--rum and Coke--we saw a commotion in the concourse. We looked up to see a dozen or more people moving fast, led by Diana Ross, the singer late of the Supremes. After forty years that memory is still clear: Ross was wearing a floor-length white mink coat which was flapping open as she ran. The people behind her were carrying luggage, and one man even had two small poodles in his arms. They were all African-Americans, and they were all wearing fur coats.

Diana Ross at LAX this year. No mink coat for this trip:

My brother picked me up in Salt Lake in the late evening, and we talked some before I crashed. I had been up for what seemed like days. We had left our unit in Nuremberg, Germany, on Saturday the 9th, traveled by train to Frankfurt, and except for our time at Ft. Dix we had been in airports and on planes ever since. That Monday night I slept in my own bed for the first time in a long time. The next morning I got up and went to see Sally. As I think back on those events forty years ago it's like the old cliché: It was the first day of the rest of my life.

For another Veteran's Day message click here.

Last year's Veteran's Day message is here.

When the storm hit

You watch as the clouds roll in, big, dark, ominous. You know that you're in an exposed place, vulnerable, and the full force of the storm will hit you.

You know there is nothing you can do but wait for the fury to envelop you, to hang on to anything you can, a tree, your wife, anything that will keep you from being blown off the ground and tossed like a woodchip through the air.

Suddenly it's on you and you take the full brunt, all the energy that has been gathering and building. It is just what everyone predicted, and you must ride it out however you can. Within a few hours it's over. But the storm has left massive damage, not only to you but to everyone around you.

Imagine you're John McCain and that storm was last Tuesday. If there is anything left to pick up, I hope you won't need FEMA to help.

***********

While Barack Obama might be the first African American to attain the job of President of the United States, portrayals of black presidents have been around for a long time, going back at least to The Man, starring James Earl Jones as Douglas Dillman. In the movie Dillman becomes President through a complicated set of coincidences with the line of succession to the presidency. In 1972, when the movie was produced, that would have been the only way a black man would have gotten the job.

More recently we had Morgan Freeman, who has played other roles not traditionally seen as black--Little John in Robin Hood comes to mind--as the president in the 1998 movie Deep Impact.

Dennis Haysbert, tall and distinguished, was President David Palmer for several years in the series 24. Haysbert went on to represent Allstate Insurance in commercials and to the lead in the series, The Unit. Haysbert has said publicly that he believes his portrayal helped Barack Obama win the nomination.

I believe Haysbert in a larger sense, that these roles have helped put in the public mind the notion of a black man as president wouldn't be all that unusual.

I also believe that having black people more active in television and movies has placed them in the public consciousness, a place where they were invisible until the late 1960s. In response to the Civil Rights movement producers put more African Americans in movies and TV. The generation my son represents grew up seeing black people on TV every day. They weren't as exotic as they seemed to us Baby Boomers who grew up in a whites-only television environment.

Finally, I found it interesting that the latest Time has a front cover with Obama, and a back cover with Tiger Woods. Both men are superstars in venues formerly closed to people of color, both men are mixed race. Could this juxtaposition have been a coincidence? Hmmm.

Halloween goes SPLAT!

Every year it's a challenge to know how many Halloween trick-or-treaters we need to be prepared for. We've lived in our neighborhood for 33 years; young children have grown up, left home. The neighborhood's aggregate age got older, so for a few years we had no trick-or-treaters, then more young families with young kids moved in. Last year we had a bunch of little kids, but the rush was over by 8:00 p.m. Last night they came until we turned out the lights and locked the door at 9:00. All night we had little kids with parents in tow, but many of the kids looked older; last night the very last visitors were teenagers who were with a person standing outside our gate. He/she was in costume, but just out of the light so I couldn't make out details. The person looked large...looming, scary. The teenagers took their candy without a thank-you, then scrammed so we shut it down for the evening.

I didn't recognize many of the kids who were ringing our doorbell; I believe they had been at it for a while, going from block to block, and had pillowcases full of candy to show for it.

What's fun about trick or treating is seeing the real little kids in costume, maybe out for their first time. I don't want to see jaded, greedy teenagers. Kids, when you're about 9 or 10 you should really be thinking about retirement from the trick or treat experience. Leave it to the littl'uns.

My son told me his daughters were content to watch the kids who came to their house all evening. The girls didn't want to go out trick or treating themselves. It's something I've noticed about them, and especially the older one, Bella. She is a very careful observer. She checks it out. She doesn't jump into anything. I think that's a good quality. It'll help keep her out of all kinds of trouble as she grows up.